A few years ago, I saw an announcement pop up on the city of Houston's social media - “Houston's first poet laureate.” Wait a minute - didn't these writers check their archives? I was raised with a family legend that my great-grandmother was a Houston poet laurate. She moved the Houston in 1928, was a hired singer in the St. Paul Methodist Church choir, a socialite, and was frequently published in the papers. I never heard a mention that she was the first poet laureate, either - there must have been others.
I contacted the writer, conveyed what I knew, and she enthusiastically searched for more information on an earlier poet laureate, but came up with nothing. The newspaper archives don't go back that far. Our family records contain clippings of my grandmother's published poems, but no mention of an official status. It can't be confirmed. The story is lost.
I started worrying (worrying is my superpower) about what more of our arts history has been lost. Houston is a young city, changing so rapidly that native Houstonians are now comparatively rare. We're losing, for one, our architectural heritage at a shocking pace - the visual aspect of our city is being subsumed and forgotten. What do we have to connect to? Where does a new resident or tourist go to connect with the meaning and purpose of this place? How and why is Houston even here? What inspired community and civic pride in the new settlement - when Alabama Ice House was two miles OUT OF TOWN? What were the builders and businessmen humming on their way to work? What arts and culture from up East and from across the ocean through Galveston did they want to see presented here?
There are a few mentions in books contemporary with the development of our arts organizations. Good to know, but if even a native has to look these things up, there's little chance the stories will find their way into the hearts of millions of newcomers. I decided to find the oldest music I could that was presented here, and get it in front of listeners. It's one thing I can do so that another part of our history, like my great-grandmother's poetry accolade, doesn't get paved over.
Early in my search for old music from, about, or performed in our area, I found on the web site of the Galveston Historical Society a song “The Galveston Fire of ‘85” along with their request for anyone to record this previously un-recorded composition. The song, it appears, was commissioned by a Galveston publisher to commemorate the conflagration that severely damaged Galveston just prior to the devastating hurricane of 1900. When I saw the sheet music, the “Old Spanish Trail” project was on! With the talents of some collaborating musician friends who are experienced in the style of the time period, we recorded the song, and it’s just one piece of local history that is not only preserved, but brought to life.
WIth no expectation of actually receiving a grant to expand the project, I submitted the recording in an application to the Houston Arts Alliance. All I hoped for was the grants committee would learn that someone out there (me) could be a point of contact for local music from the pre-recording-technology era. I was gobsmacked when the application was awarded a grant - enough to produce a full-length concert of more music from 19th-century Houston history!
So, GREAT - now I had to actually decide on a program from my findings, and arrange the pieces for an ensemble. The stories of the works are in the concert program HERE . Several of them had never previously been recorded, including some from America's leading colonial-era composers. I found there is a considerable amount of interesting music that came from or through Texas in the 19th century, so “Old Spanish Trail” can continue to bring these works from the page to live performance indefinitely.